Citation

Byrne PA, Ma T, Elzohairy Y. Accid. Anal. Prev. 2016; 95: 125-131.

Affiliation

Safety Policy and Education Branch, Ministry of Transportation of Ontario, Toronto, Canada.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2016, Elsevier Publishing)

DOI

10.1016/j.aap.2016.07.005

PMID

27434801

Abstract

Although vehicle impoundment has become a common sanction for various driving offences, large-scale evaluations of its effectiveness in preventing drinking and driving recidivism are almost non-existent in the peer-reviewed literature. One reason is that impoundment programs have typically been introduced simultaneously with other countermeasures, rendering it difficult to disentangle any observed effects. Previous studies of impoundment effectiveness conducted when such programs were implemented in isolation have typically been restricted to small jurisdictions, making high-quality evaluation difficult. In contrast, Ontario's "long-term" and "seven-day" impoundment programs were implemented in relative isolation, but with tight relationships to already existing drinking and driving suspensions. In this work, we used offence data produced by Ontario's population of over 9 million licensed drivers to perform interrupted time series analysis on drinking and driving recidivism and on rates of driving while suspended for drinking and driving. Our results demonstrate two key findings: (1) impoundment, or its threat, improves compliance with drinking and driving licence suspensions; and (2) addition of impoundment to suspension reduces drinking and driving recidivism, possibly through enhanced suspension compliance.

Crown Copyright © 2016. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Language: en